Vodafone Spain Picks IBM zSystem for Smarter Cities Initiative

The Vodafone initiative, as reported here previously, leverages the most advanced mobile communications technology including citywide sensors and a Global M2M Platform that will enable the connection of thousands of sensors to the intelligent Vodafone Connected City system. The new cloud-based system will run on IBM Linux z Systems. The Linux z Systems were selected for their high security, which protects cloud services while also delivering the speed, availability, and efficiency required to drive mobile services at scale. To do something at scale you really do want the z System.

Courtesy of IBM: zSystem and Linux

For Vodafone this represents the beginning of what they refer to as a Smarter Cities services initiative. The effort targets local governments and city councils with populations ranging between 20.000 – 200.000 citizens. The services provided will address customer’s needs in the following key areas: urban vitality, public lighting, energy efficiency, waste management, and citizen communications.

In effect, Vodafone is becoming a SaaS provider by leveraging their new zSystem. Vodafone’s customers for this are the government groups that opt to participate. The company announced the effort at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona at the beginning of the month.

One of the initial participants will be Seville, the capital of the province of Andalucía, where a control and development center will be established by Vodafone. The telco will invest more than 243 million euros over two years on telecommunications infrastructure, encouraging the development of the technology sector and developing projects to create strategic growth in the region.

Initially, the center will focus on creating smart city solutions that can easily and efficiently be used by cities ranging from 20,000 to 150,000 residents; cities that otherwise may not have the funds to invest in smart city infrastructure projects on their own. This center is also expected to help make the Andalucía territory of Spain a leader in the development of Big Data and smart solutions.

IBM is delivering the full stack to Vodafone: a set of cloud services that include an enterprise zSystem Linux server (IBM zBC12), v7000 storage, IBM intelligent operations, an information services solution, and more. Vodafone opted for the z and Linux to enable cost-efficient, highly secure cloud services while also delivering the speed, availability and efficiency required to drive mobile services at scale. IBM Intelligent Operations software will provide monitoring and management of city services. IBM’s MobileFirst platform will be used to create citizen-facing mobile applications while IBM Information Server and Maximo asset management software will round out the IBM stack.

Overall, IBM, the zSystem, and Linux brought a number of benefits to this initiative. Specifically, the zSystem proved the least expensive when running more than seven vertical services as Vodafone is planning. An example of such a vertical service is the public lighting of a city. This also is where scalability brings a big advantage. Here again, the zSystem running Linux delivers scalability along with greater security and regulatory compliance. Finally, another critical capability for Vodafone was the zSystem’s ability to isolate workloads.

In short, the zSystem’s security and regulation compliance; reliability, resilience, and robustness; strong encoding and workload isolation, workload management and ability to meet SLAs; scalability; and high efficiency clinched the Vodafone deal.

This could prove a big win for IBM and the zSystem. Vodafone has mobile operations in 26 countries, partners with mobile networks in 54 more, and runs fixed broadband operations in 17 markets. As of the end of 2014, Vodafone had 444 million mobile customers and 11.8 million fixed broadband customers. Vodafone Spain’s 14.811.000 mobile customers and 2.776.000 broadband ones will certainly take maximum advantage of the zSystem’s scalability and reliability.

…as a follow up to last week’s report on recent success coming from the OpenPower Foundation that string continued this week at the OpenPOWER Inaugural Summit with the OpenPOWER Foundation announcing more than ten hardware solutions spanning systems, boards, cards, and a new microprocessor customized for the Chinese market. Built collaboratively by OpenPOWER members, the new solutions exploit the POWER architecture to provide more choice, customization and performance to customers, including hyperscale data centers.

Among the products and prototypes OpenPOWER members revealed are:

Firestone, a prototype of a new high-performance server targeting exascale computing and projected to be 5-10x faster than today’s supercomputers. It incorporate technology from NVIDIA and Mellanox.

The first GPU-accelerated OpenPOWER developer platform, the Cirrascale RM4950, resulting from collaboration between NVIDIA, Tyan, and Cirrascale.

An open server specification and motherboard mock-up combining OpenPOWER, Open Compute and OpenStack by Rackspace and designed to run OpenStack services.

Other member-developed new products leverage the Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI), a hallmark feature built into the POWER architecture. DancingDinosaur initially covered CAPI here.

Reminder: it is time to register for IBM Edge2015 in Las Vegas May 10-15. Edge2015 combines all of IBM’s infrastructure products with both a technical track and an executive track. You can be sure DancingDinosaur will be there. Watch for upcoming posts here that will highlight some of the more interesting sessions.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran IT analyst and writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog. See more of his IT writing on Technologywriter.com and here.